Joan Danziger

"My sculptures combine an interplay of the animal strength and beauty of nature with the human spirit."

Joan Danizger's works evoke magical rituals, combining human and animal forms. Of her sculptures, Danziger says, "The use of animal imagery as metaphorical or psychological subject has great potency for me, it gives my sculptures a life of their own and creates a magical world."

Danziger received a B.F.A. from Cornell University and also studied at the Art Students League in New York City and the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, Italy. In the late 1960s, Danziger shifted from painting to a focus on sculpture. “I got tired of being confined by the canvas,” she says. Her interest in nature and animal forms she attributes to extended travels and time spent living outdoors, backpacking in the western United States and summering in Idaho. Many of her sculptures are made using celluclay, a self-hardening modeling clay, with wire armatures.

She is currently a resident of Washington, D.C. Her work can be found in the collections of the New Jersey State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., among others.